


A Strange Rhyme

by opalemeraldcat



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Conversations, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Start to a slow burn, Written more post 2x14, post 2x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 18:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14676999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalemeraldcat/pseuds/opalemeraldcat
Summary: Caleb asks Molly about waking up in a grave. Molly gives one answer. They note the opposites in each other. It's just a conversation--in various mediums.***Caleb wished Molly were a little less sharp. But if he weren’t sharp he wouldn’t be Molly, and Caleb wouldn’t need to understand him.





	A Strange Rhyme

The evenings in inns began with a table for all of them as they spoke about the day, either quietly about intrigue or boastingly loud about slain monsters. After an hour or so, it spun out into different, smaller conversations. This time, Fjord and Beau were speaking about something, Beau animated and Fjord considering, while Jester peppered Yasha with quirky thoughts and eyebrow-raising questions that had apparently occurred to her throughout the day. Nott listened as well, occasionally interjecting with a mixture of fascination and disbelief. Molly was a few seats away, taking a pause and considering something an unfocused distance away, one hand propping up his head. So Caleb returned from the bar, exact change clutched in one hand and a full flagon of beer in the other, and sat next to Molly.

“I have some questions, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he said seriously, looking at his own hands as he placed the beer down. He saw the small surprise then touched smile from the corner of his eye. “They are about your birth. If you are open to answering, I expect you would like to answer outside.”

“How kind of you. Ha.” A pause, a short inhale. “Yes. Alright, let’s go.”

“You do not want another drink?” Molly had taken only two tonight, smaller glasses of somewhat finer liquor, the sort neither of the two men had tasted till they joined the Mighty Nein.

“No, I don’t think I do. Shall we?”

Caleb nodded, gave a final glance to Nott, who smiled reflexively, then, seeing Molly following him, her expression changed to something knowing. Caleb turned away and muttered a thank you to Mollymauk for holding the door.

With the tall buildings and lights of Zadash, less of the sky was visible than Caleb would have liked. He thought of the celestial trip he had taken sleeping by the Cree artifact and frowned, wishing for that peace again.

“An alley’s always a good spot for a heart-to-heart, don’t you think?” Molly said, strolling around the corner of the inn. There was a stair on the side of the inn, barely more than a leaned ladder but with wide, flat rungs. It led to a door on the second floor, which Caleb knew was at the end of the hall of rented rooms. Molly sat on a stair, his feet pulled up and his violet tail dangling. His jewelry glimmered and he gave a thin smile.

“Tell me what you know about waking up in the dirt, please,” Caleb said, looking straight into Molly’s sanguine eyes.

Molly’s expression tightened. His voice was light but had a sourness hiding, Caleb could hear, real hurt. “Don’t you want all the interrogations to be everyone and a truth spell against me? You’ll simply have to tell them whatever I tell you later. Or—maybe someone else will ask the same thing and you’ll compare stories to figure me out?”

“I might tell Nott,” Caleb said honestly. “And no, we have no plan against you, Mollymauk. Not just because we all seemed to feel that you were speaking true the other day, from whatever Jester did, but because I think that would be wrong. There has been…much faith extended between members of this group.”

“Does that trouble you, Caleb?”

“It is so new I cannot tell. I think, truthfully, I might like it very much. And that, that I distrust too.” _You should just tell them. It’s driving you mad!_ Well, he had told two of them. And it had felt good. That was the best word he could use for it, now. It could still blow up in his face.

“Mm.” There was pure sympathy in Mollymauk’s eyes, and Caleb inhaled sharply, conscious of his deeper thoughts showing themselves. He changed the subject: “What was it like?”

“You’re smart. You can imagine it, if anyone can.” Molly leaned back, the picture of grace and watched him. He started to talk.

“I coughed dirt out of my mouth. I felt my face and then horns with my hands, then felt how I felt things. I touched my hands to each other, experimenting.

Then the instinct to move kicked in and I did that for a while, wandering between trees till I forgot why I’d started. I realized I had a stomach only when it hurt from emptiness. Seeing a moon, a beautiful moon, and not knowing any greater light, but oh so grateful not to be in the dark anymore, the under-dirt dark. Then I had something in me that cried out for others—more things like me and not the moon and trees. I didn’t know the color of my skin till the morning.”

He was silent a moment. “And I didn’t know that my scars were made not born, and I did not like finding out. But that was later, thta was after I realized I was saying a word. When I realized I was speaking a word I went silent until I learned a new one. And I learned more, and then I knew more all a sudden, and then I start making real memories. Before that it was a blur… Watercolors.”

Imagine memories like that. Blurred ones that grew into something. Rather than false ones, leading to broken shards, unmistakable and horrid. Caleb looked down.

Gentle fingers tapped the back of his hand. “Hey.” He started, and moved his hand forward before he could help himself. Molly raised one eyebrow halfway, and took the hand in his. Pressed his thumbs to the palm and smoothed them down slowly, soothingly. “Don’t go back to that place No time for that. Never is! Weren’t we talking about me?”

“Weren’t you avoiding my real questions? You gave me a story. Not how you felt.” Caleb murmured, watching the black nails and sure thumbs. In a moment this would mean something. In his head he had an exact counter of how long the moment had to be to be significant.

“I like stories. Stories are me. Maybe,” a flash in the eyes, “you should learn to ask for what you want directly.”

Caleb took his hand back before Molly finished that last syllable. “Tell me about how you don’t remember things. How you learned to speak again, and how you are a full person now, only two years after that.”

“Well, I must have kept some of my last self for that,” Molly said, seemingly unbothered by Caleb’s withdrawal. “I learned language very quickly. Though I’ve got Gustav’s accent.” He was proud about that, his tone and flicked tail showed. “Written text came almost immediately after that. Then I could form patterns, make leaps between things, read people. Recognize magic, sense danger, ask questions. My mind was clear before Yasha came, and of course talking to her helped. I love her so.” It was clear; as close as any family, Caleb could see. “The others, eh. By then I was getting good at lying, thank goodness! I hadn’t lost that mystique of the empty-eyed, dirt-cloaked man with a shaved head, but I encouraged their theories, so they didn't worry too hard about them… They liked me enough, my lies and my new sword tricks. I was even trying tightrope walking! And then we had a really good performance in one town, and had an after-party with all richest and most fun folk there. I made up stories for three hours straight and kept my head on right, and a very wonderful woman taught me about the last thing I needed to know to enjoy myself properly in this beautiful world.” Molly grinned, leaving no doubt to what he meant.

Potential images of “a very wonderful woman”—pale? plump? human? painted?—flipped through Caleb’s mind, a sideshow to his focus. “When did you decide you would look—as you?”

Molly plucked on the sides of his coat a little, moving his deeply cut white shirt and his jewelry. At the same time he tossed his curls to the side, showing the peacock tattoo. “All this?”

“Ja. All that,” Caleb muttered, face shuttered in a way that could have insulted a stupider person.

“I found out as quickly as I could what made me happy. And then I set about making this body my own, in all the ways I could. Even the sting of inked needles felt good. Felt new. I decided what I wanted to be, and I became it to the utmost that I could. Colors! Patterns! Glitter! The muscles I tone, the hair I let grow, so on. And I smile as I wish.” He showed him one of those smiles. “And voila. I make a home.”

“Einfach. So simple,” Caleb said flatly. He had a suspicion that this was again, only one type of answer.

“If you make it so.” Those eyes, gods. Caleb wished he would tire seeing their shifting streams of passion and calculation. Usually he hated people trying to take away his layers, literally and figuratively. But now he just waited for Molly to ask what he wanted to.

Yet Molly didn’t, not then. He craned his long neck back and looked up at the top of the stair, the door into the hallway between bedrooms. “Too bad there’s no way up to the roof.” He turned his head and explained, “I don’t usually stay in towns long, and get back on the road after a few days. I’m used to the stars. And winds.”

“It was a little harder I think in the forest, but yes, the feeling is not different for me. I do not like the smoke—it blocks out so much.”

“Sure it does,” Molly said quietly. Caleb didn’t say anything, though his pulse jumped at Molly’s mind going faster than his own to what they’d experienced in the gnoll cave. _Time for that later._ The firm kiss on his forehead he’d barely felt, too caught up in shock.

Caleb wished Molly were a little less sharp. But if he weren’t sharp he wouldn’t be Molly, and Caleb wouldn’t need to understand him.

_Want. Want_ to understand him. It was important to keep that distance. Nott and he could leave town tomorrow. Hell, Molly and Yasha could leave them. It could all still fall apart.

That was when Molly stretched and asked the question: “What do you want to be, Caleb? What are you doing to make yourself more yourself?”

Caleb looked toward the inn roof and ran through the spells he knew, even though he didn’t have to in order to know none would take them up there. Yasha might be able to throw them, but then that would leave getting down…

“Caleb?”

“That is a question, Mollymauk. That is a question.”

“Yes. I know. You’re under no obligation to answer.”

Caleb sat down on the dirty ground of the alley, because he was tired of being higher than Molly and he was tired in general. Pulled his knees up, laid his arms over them, and looked at his comrade, who looked down at him. Beautiful—and young, this tiefling. “Before our fortune, I was worrying. All the time. About safety, about food in my mouth and Nott’s. About unbroken bones. It was hard to think beyond that. But I always did. I always… I need to know things. That is why I live. Even as a dirty thief, and a short-lived human who falls down in a storm. I will learn. I will learn so much I will turn mountains into clouds.” His eyes pricked. “I will hold magic like it is _nothing_.”  
Molly said, “Yes. You don’t strike me as one who will ever learn ‘enough.’”

“No. No, that I am not.” Caleb let a smile slip at that. He thought of his parents’ saying something similar. He stopped smiling.

Molly threw a gesture out with his right hand, something vague. “We are…quite something, the pair of us. Standing next to each other, that is.”

Human, tiefling. Wizard, swordsman. Peacock, pigeon. “Opposites.”

“I was going to say poetry.” Molly smiled. “A glittering creature with no past, and a muddied one with far too much.”

“I think any child reading that poem would find the lesson very clear: one of the men chose better.”

“We know better than that, the two of us who compose the rhyme.”

“Do we, Mollymauk?”

Molly leaned forward and spoke quietly, intensely. “I would not make your choices, Caleb, and I wouldn’t want to be in position to. You are you. Maybe you do yourself no favors, but I don’t need to ask why you hesitate to look like anything but a poor vagrant. You have amazing skill for magic in that body. Nott is devoted to you. And Fjord respects you, and Jester learns from you, and you can make the whole group laugh, though it takes your pulse high to attempt. No,” Molly sighed, looking over Caleb, long eyelashes sweeping, his voice wistful, “I would not change you. It would destroy something beautiful, something inexpressibly important in this world.”

A group spilled out of the tavern and into the street around the corner from them, bringing raucous shouts. Molly sat still on his stair, but Caleb stood up and looked at the mouth of the alley. But he did not move for it. As the street quieted, he said not any of the bitter things he had thought after his moment of shock. Instead he stepped toward Molly. Who, without a moment of hesitation, fluidly rose from reclining and more than matched Caleb’s height. 

“There is another difference, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” Caleb murmured. He glanced down at Molly’s lips and felt a pang that what he was going to say would cut the tension between them so coldly. “You leave your scars on your own body.”

Molly looked at him, his gaze flicking around his face. The chain between his left horn and ear twinkled in the bit of light from the alleyway entry. “Scars leave shadows on those who give them, too,” he said. “Awful shadows. That’s how you know the giver is a good man.”

And kissed him. Kissed him despite all that he’d said. Caleb had time to think, _Ah, what are you doing,_ before he let go of his words and asked not. For they both liked a mystery, and a bit of a risk. Both had hearts for sweetness as well, but had not found that out yet. 

Molly did not try to deepen the kiss at first, only pressed his lips to Caleb’s, and, after Caleb moved his head and engaged, let out an amazed half-chuckle half-sigh and shifted closer, putting one hand on Caleb’s shoulder and the other cupping his face, thumb on his cheek. Caleb felt the sound flutter through him, transformative as his magics. He kissed back, equally slow and respectful, feeling an odd sensation in him knowing Molly was giving him options. He bit the tiefling’s lower lip gently, and Molly drew back just enough to look him in the eye. Caleb met his gaze.

Then Molly nodded, and pushed Caleb firmly two steps back against the alley wall. Kissed him again, putting his body behind it this time, his waist just brushing Caleb’s, his hands slipping down to the small of his back. Kissing him open-mouthed now, and hissing softly when Caleb nipped a second time, a third. He moved quickly, like a dancer, but never too quickly for Caleb, who found himself strangely able to match his beautiful, skilled, passionate partner. (Part of his mind was just listing new adjectives for Molly, the part that needed language for everything.) Molly found moments to savor, then slowed down and trailed a finger behind Caleb’s ear. He drew back for a breath and Caleb felt restraint in the man’s body as he pushed toward him. Without his weight, just testing the waters. Caleb was grateful for the moment to think, to be sure his wants. Then he yanked Molly closer, and felt a wash of arousal when the tiefling placed his mouth and light tongue to his neck. This was good. This was very good. Caleb closed his eyes and exhaled. A shiver moved all the way through him, from head to toe, like when he had entered that bath in Trostenwald, not knowing his body had been numb till it was not.

Mollymauk felt the tremble, and hummed. He slowed and kissed Caleb’s neck with closed lips, then drew back some. “Enough?”

“You are funny,” Caleb deadpanned. Molly was swung around and pressed against the wall. And without need for words encouraged Caleb’s learning enthusiastically. In only a few minutes, it seemed, Caleb had figured out he liked a hand pressed here, the back of his skull, the other hand here, fingertips tracing down the belly, and so forth. Maybe Caleb had been making conjectures of such things earlier than this, playing through ideas in his head. Molly made note to tease later. Whatever the case, the fire was sparking through him from various points, collecting in his chest and lower gut. Mollymauk’s mind began skipping to very good ideas about kneeling in the alley and being held flesh to flesh in the inn, and his blood grew hot and rushed away from his head. But he forced himself back into this moment. Into this extension of their conversation, a precious scene of its own. When Caleb held them both still for a deep, thorough, heart-stopping kiss, Molly made an inimitable noise and pulled from him after.

Caleb nodded, also breathless, and concentrated on cooling down, and tried not to concentrate on how much Molly had to cool down as well. He was proud of that, to the point of exasperating radiance.

“I don’t think it’s good to share a room tonight,” Molly said, after a minute. Then thought he should have said something else first.

But Caleb was relieved to hear that. So much had just shifted. “Ja. I… Another night?”

“Yes. Another night. There is no hurry.” He laid a hand on Caleb’s chest and said, like a plea to the universe. “None at all. Not a war or a crooked politician or a god is going to be splintering the Mighty Nein tomorrow.” 

“Ja.” Caleb looked Mollymauk over with eyes wiser from the past hour. “Ja. I mean, yes.”

“Alright. Stop looking at me like that. Actually, don’t. Mm. Oh, and I don’t think this needs to be hidden from the team. But I’m also not going to volunteer it.”

“One of our friends will see the marks on our necks,” Caleb murmured, with a short smile.

Molly grinned. “Purple skin, fast healing. I think you’ll be spotted, pale one, but I shan’t be.”

“I will borrow from one of the smut books I have read and say I wooed the emperor’s daughter before she disappeared into the night. I was, hm, her taste of freedom.”

Molly laughed long. Caleb, being playful! “You should joke more often.”

“Hm. Maybe.”

After a moment, Molly said, “You know, there’s another reason for my presentation. It’s to see how people react to them.”

“Ja, you told us this. It helped you see the High Rictor was a jerk, yes? She showed scorn. As guards do, sometimes, and others.”

“Scorn, hate, fear, interest, objectification—yes, I see a lot from the reactions others have. It is a fast way to get to know people.” Molly placed a hand on Caleb’s shirt, feeling the slight chest beneath, the breath beneath that. “But I have more things about me than that, loud as I make those.

“You don’t desire me because you looked at me. I like that. I’d like to see what you think of the rest of me. I’ve worked hard on it—making it and finding it born in me from when my soul entered that dirt-covered body. And I’m a little vain about my self.”

“I want to know also,” Caleb said simply. He felt the luckiest he ever had; perhaps he’d tapped the shape this morning without knowing. And in this moment, he wasn’t even afraid of losing the joy. Not yet.

“There’s no rush,” Molly said again, hand around his neck.

“There’s no rush,” Caleb agreed, and then they both decided there was no rush to return, either, and continued their conversation wordlessly.


End file.
